LITERARY COLUMN.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11725, 28 October 1903, Page 7

LITERARY COLUMN.

DANTE. (By J. W. Joy.n't, M.A.) Dante has been for some time occupying the attention of the London public in the form of a drama. We learn from M. Sardou himself that he had often thought of dramatising Dante, jbut had been deterred by the difficulty of finding an actor with a personality suitable for representing the lean and world-weary Florentine of tho Aliddle Ages. At last be saw in Sir Henry Irving, in bis sixty-fifth year, the desired combination of qualities. And so we have a new and decidedly modern form of representation to add to the Dante pictures which are scattered over Europe. What Botticelli, Orcagna, William Blake, or D. G. Rossetti would have thought of this dramatising idea it is a little dimcultto imagine. A ruthless destruction of the ideal they would probably have regarded it. But, after all, when we get over the first, shock, there is no more radical objection to depicting scones from the “Inferno, or from the life of Dante and Beatrice, on the stage, than to depicting them in fresco or oil canvas. And, if ihe public will not read Dante, it would be a mistaken regard for their susceptibilities to shrink from letting them see him. Perhaps even some of them* may be led to enquire further; especially when the newspapers take advantage of the situation to re-open old problems, like the question of the real existence of Beatrice. Halo and mystery are very well; but even such a crude thing as the spread of positive knowledge has its claims in the twentieth century. Some of us may feel that we would run a long way to escape seeing Dante on the' stage; but that does not settle the general question.

Like many other men of commanding powers, Dante had two lives, which can be contemplated apart, but which in reality blended so as to form one complete nature. There seems but little affinity between the Florentine politician, plunged in the seething faction-pool of Guelfs and Ghibelines, and Whites and Blacks, and the author of the “Vita Nuova” and the "Divina Cornmedia.” And yet. by some strange psychological chemistry, these two not only were fused into one personality, but reacted profoundly on each other. We have too long been in the habit of imagining incompatibilities, and setting limits to nature’s power of co-ordination. Before such a case as Dante our paltry fancies appear very foolish. Wo must surely see that ho was greater as a man of action for being a poet, and greater as a poet for being a man of action. The intensity of nature, which almost consumed him, was equally manifested in both capacities. Whatever Ids faults as a citizen, the one impulse which governed his public life was a fiery and passionate patriotism. He loved Florence. He thought he saw her in danger of being brought to destruction by unscrupulous men. He thought, too, that bis way was the right one for saving her. And so he asserted himself in his imperious, autocratic way, giving no quarter to opponents', and in the end epurning even Ids own political associates.

(But tho idealist in him manifested itself even in his practical politics. It was as an idealist that, after nine years of exile, ho looked for the deliverance of Florence, and his own restoration, to the dreamy, Henry of Luxembourg, who, had ascended the Imperial Throne as Henry VII. 'Henry came into Italy, following, as he thought, in the footsteps of Otto or Barbarossa, but more iu the spirit of a ferlfeht of Arthur’s court. He died in Italy j> Italian politics resumed their course; and Dante remained an exile. Wandering among courts and universities, lie ate out his heart, but lie wrote the “Divine Comedy.” And the circumstances of its birth are indelibly stamped on that poem. , Had Dante spent the last twenty years of his life as a happy and prosperous citizen of a united Florence, instead of as an outcast, we should not have the “Divine Comedy” which we have now. That we should not have a poem on the same lines at all, it would be incorrect to suppose; for Dante bad been growing up to the theme Airing the whole of his working life, ana it was, in fact, the crown and consummation of all his earlier work. But the infusion of gall, which dyes its stream in patches, those glowing outbursts over tho woes and corruptions of Florence, and, above all, tlie general tone of lonely grandeur which pervades it—these, whether for loss or gain, would not have been there. Dante’s physical existence began in the year 1265; and at the ago of nine years began bis soul-existence, bis awaking to self-conscious life.- The manner of this awakening, and the development of his subsequent experiences, he has spread out before us in that strange and perplexing idyll, the “Vita Nuova.” The boy of nine met a girl of eight in the street; they looked at each other, and passed on. But tho boy’s life was shaken to its foundations ; Love as an overmastering power took possession of his soul; and the poet in him struggled into a vague and fluttering existence. That girl bore tho name, or at least Dante gives her the name, which is- indisssolubly linked with his own —the name of Beatrice. It was nine more years before they met again, and then she spoke to him, which threw him into such an intoxication of bliss as to deprive him of the power of speech or action. The narrative proceeds with detailed self-analysis. Ordinary life became impossible ; one absorbing thought rendered existence a waking dream. He tried to preserve his secret from the vulgar gaze. He diverted suspicion by writing sonnets to bis beloved with a turn of ambiguity, or by pretended devotion to somebody else. But we cannot go through the book; and it can be read, either in the Italian, which is simple and direct, or in C. E. Norton’s excellent, translation 1 . 1 Beatrice dies, and he is plunged iff. grief: i Towards the close there is a curious episode of another “gentle lady,” who was drawn to him by the sight of his sorrow, and who for a time seemed likely to usurp the place of the lost one in his heart, though not on the same ideal and elevated plane. This “Vita Nuova” is one of tlie problems of literature. Only the superficial reader will be satisfied with accepting it as an unsophisticated love story; protracted meditation brings a haunting susjiiuiou that under its apparent simpliafty lurk deeper meanings. The allegorising tendency was strong in Dante. The “Divine Comedy” is saturated with allegory, ’ 'Beatrice herself taking her place there as a factor in an elaborate scheme of symbolism. In this .great prase work, the “Convito,” written about 1303, some thirteen years after the "Vita Nuova,” he expounds .philosophically the theory of allegory and symbolism as legitimate modes of conveying truth. Not only so, but in that same work he expressly declares a part of the “Vita Nuova” to he allegorical, viz., tlie episode of the second lady. This kdy, according to the Dante of the “Convito/* symbolise*

philosophy; and the meaning intended to be conveyed is, that Dante, inconsolable for Die loss of Beatrice, sought alleviation in the study of philosophy and the wise writeis of antiquity. Now, this exposition enhances the perplexity of the whole question. If Dante in this later work, which ls theoretical and expository, had said that the "Vita Xuova.” was un allegory, we should understand exactly where we were. But when he ascribes this character to one section only, the obvious implication is that ■lie meant the rest to be taken as a. literal liarraifcive of fact. ® And at first view this selection of a part as allegorical might be regarded as a, strong argument in favour of the literal truth of the great body of the work, which is occupied with Beatrice herself. But why did the story change from fact to allegory, without giving the slightest indication of a new departure, either bv change of style or in any other way? If Dante was afraid of being misunderstood—an he showed afterwards that he was—why did he present his devotion to study in a. form that could only convey an unfavourable impression of himself? If it was so 'important to his reputation to explain away the episode of the second lady, why was the explanation reserved for thirteen years? The more we turn the matter over and probe it, the stronger grows the conviction that the whole of the "Vita Xuova,” as fact or allegory, must stand or fall together. The question is not only difficult, it is tdso of the deepest interest and importance, as bearing on the nature of the poetic forces which swayed Dante, and increased in volume as lie went on. If Beatrice had no existence beyond that of a symbol, what was she .meant to symbolise? Various answers luive 'been given:—The Church, Theology, the Umpire, the Feminine Ideal, and so on. Xuw. lam not prepared to doginultd.se as to whether she existed or not; but what I am absolutely convinced of is, that the Beatrice of the "Vita Xuova’' (whatever may be said of the Beatrice of the “Diivina Com-media’') did not symbolise any one of these things. .Fancy a boy of nine being thrown into such a state as is described in the book over abstract Theology, the Empire, or the Feminine Ideal! If we are to surrender Beatrice as a creature of flesh and blood, we must assume that Dante is describing some powerful shock of spiritual illumination, some sudden sense of mystery and beauty, such as is not unexampled in the case of dreamy poetic boys. If there were space to go through the ‘‘Vita Xuova,” ii, might be shown that it works out fairly harmoniously on some such conception as this. But, however this may be, the radical point to keep in view is, the continuity of Dante's poetic life. The early work is bound to the latest by a chain, one link of which is the ‘‘Convito.” Tlie closing words of the ‘‘Vita Xuova” are: —“Then a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me resolve to speak no more of this blessed one, until I could more worthily treat of her. And, to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. So that, if it. shall please Him through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to say of her what was- never said of any woman. And then may it. please Him who is the Lord of Grace, that my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady, namely, of that blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks upon the face of Him who is blessed for ever.’’ Here is the foreshadowing, twenty years before, of the transfigured and glorified Beatrice of the “Divine Comedy.” It may be assumed front circumstantial evidence that the actual writing of his great poem occupied Dante from the year 1314 until his death in 1321, the writing being divided between the courts of Verona and Ravenna. But the conception had been gradually taking shape during all the latter half of his life. All his intellectual and spiritual training, his meditations, his experience of men and of the ways of God in the world, his moral struggles, his hopes, fears, joys and sorrows, dreams of bliss and slmdderings of terror, were to be fused Into one grand, comprehensive whole. He had all the learning of his age, and he had a mental range and sweep of conception, which few niCn of any age have approached. He had studied earnestly—the Bible, the Greek philosophers (in Latin translations), the Latin poets and prose-writers, the early fathers of the Church, the mediteval doctors of theology and philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, and the theory of language. And in ills wanderings lie bad closely studied nature, in her minutest as in her grandest operations. Moreover, he had known suffering, and there is little doubt that he had known sin. He had gone down into the valley of the shadow; and the dark and tangled wood, in which he represents himself as wandering at the opening of the poem, represents an actual phase of his own life-history. So the poem comes partly out of acquired knowledge, and partly out of the depths of his own soul. An imagination of extraordinarily vivid and almost lurid power did the rest. The poem is in the form of a vision, representing a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. It is divided into a hundred cantos, consisting of over fourteen thousand lines. The verse is in three-lined stanzas, the first and tliird line of each,stanza rhyming with the middle line of the preceding, the whole thus forming an unbroken chain. Through hell and purgatory Dante is guided by Virgil, whom a messenger from Beatrice has commissioned to initiate her old lover info the mysteries of the spirit-worlds. At the end of purgatory, where is the entrance to the Earthly Paradise, Virgil leaves him, and Beatrice herself is his guide through the realms of the blest. The pagan poet, typical of natural philosophy and human wisdom, has no access to the habitation of the saints of God. Pathetic are his words at parting: “I can discern no farther”; but they embody a profound meaning. ' The topographical configuration of his three worlds, as conceived by Dante, is, briefly put, as follows. Hell begins under the earth’s crust, and forms a vast funnel, tapering towards the centre of the earth. A series of shelves or platforms (the “nine circles’-’ of the poem) extend inwards from the surrounding wail of rock,,.to wards the abyss which intersects them all. At the centre is Lucifer, lord of all the grisly domain, a figure of enormous proportions, standing with half his body in one hemisphere, and half in the other. On the broad shelves, which run round the pit, the various classes of sinners are expiating their crimes with punishments loathsome, agonising, or grimly ludicrous. At the opposite point of the earth from the entrance to the pit is a huge protuberance, standing alone amid the waste of waters. This is the Mount of Purgatory; and the mediaeval theory of its origin was that, when Lucifer fell from Heaven, and was carried down to the centre of the earth, the soil displaced by his passage was forced up into a mountain on the opposite ‘side. At the same time the waters of the eastern hemisphere, fleeing from his approach, flooded the western, leaving the Mountain gdqiie projecting. Here, too, are shelves or circles, as in the Inferno, running round, the Mountain, each occupied by sinners wdergoing various forms of expiation, preparatory to their ascent to the abodes of bliss. On the top of the mountain is, not the eternal snow of an ordinary earthly mountain, but a delectable land, the Earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden. The conception of Heaven is based on the astronomical ideas of the Middle Ages. The earth was the centre of the universe, aud round it- the heavens revolved, as a series of nine concentric spheres. Each sphere was named after its planet, the sun and moon being included among the planets. The ninth heaven was culled the "Primum Mobile”; it had no stars, was the most rapid in its revolution, and was the source of the movement and change throughout the rest of the system. Beyond this again was the spaceless, boundless, and motionless

Empyrean, the dwelling-place of the Most High God Himself, where His saints shine for ever in His reflected light. When Dante and Beatrice ascended from the Earthly Paradise, they cut through this series of spheres, pausing in each to view the occupants, who are distributed according to the suitability of their temperament to the predominating planet. When they reach the Empyrean, Beatrice resumes her vacant seat among the rose-petals, which surround the Central Ilight, and Dante's pilgrimage is over. Into the record of this extraordinary journey Dante has poured all his wealth of knowledge, his exalted piety, his bitterness of desolation, bis tenderness, his poetic power, his indignation, and his love. No such variety of elements has ever been infused into a poem. But the hand never falters; the toucli is equally tirm among the horrors and woes of the Inferno as among the ineffable raptures of the Empyrean. The poet moves with measured strength from scene to scene, and from mood to mood, wasting no rhetoric, indulging no sentimentality, ever master of himself and of his theme. The poem is no mere topographical description of the next world, or a classified catalogue of rewards and punishments. Individuals are picked out at every stage, mostly drawn from recent Italian history, and 13 b - v conversations with these that dramatic colour is imparted, and the deeper issues of 1 morals and destiny are propounded and discussed. Dante finds old associates and old opponents in strange and unexpected positions; on the former he wastes no sympathy, the latter he taunts in language of callous and almost savage irony. His. most envenomed bitterness is vented on "the simoniac Popes, and the general corruptions and greed of the Church. Then comes, perhaps, a wave oftenderness, a toucliing description, or a beautiful and delicately-finished- simile. His association with Virgil is full of fine human touches; trepidations, waywardness, and contrition oil his own part; gentle forbearance, calm courage and wisdom on the part of his* master and guide. In his ascent, with Beatrice the play of human qualities is lost in a transcendental ecstasy. Appalling and repulsive as is much of the •• Inferno,” it is a greater piece of work than the “ Paradiso,” where the skill of the artist is shown in diversifying pictures ot bliss, which tend to become monotonous. And yet this steady and patient advance through worlds of mystic blessedness, with the sense of ever-increasing effulgence, was a masterly and daring achievement. And such episodes as the life-stories of St. Francis and St. Dominic are in the purest and best- style of narrative poetry. But nothing in the way of episode in “Purgatorio ” or “ Paradiso ” can equal, for concentrated pathos in the one ease, and concentrated agony in the other, the stories of Francesca da Rimini and Count Ugolino in the “'lnferno.” There is no danger of the charge being brought against Dante, which is said to have been once brought against Shakesthat he was a writer of no originality, being full of quotations. In other words, but. little of the language of the great medieval writer has become incorporated with men’s everyday speech, as much of the great Elizabethan has. The difference may be partly accounted for by difference of themes. Dealing with otherworld mysteries and matters of intense spiritual moment, and with man only in his relation to these, Dante had no opportunity for those pregnant generalisations, those rounded utterances, which reflect a world of human wisdom or passion. But a deeper difference lies in the mental characteristics of the two men. Shakespeare seems always in the condition or a swelling sea, awaiting, as it were, the obstacle of some big thought, to break into a tremendous wave. Dante - is not charged with possibilities in this way. He astonishes and thrills us by bursts of tenderness or of wrath, or by a piece of exquisitely felicitous diction. But he does not reveal the depths in flashes; he does not pile meaning into a metaphor, or into metaphors which trample each other in their rush for place. Of course his similes and many other kinds of detached passage are common property in Italy. But I can recall only two passages, which have acquired familiar usage among us Britons. One is the closing lines, or rather the. last line, of the terrible inscription over the gates of Hell. The whole inscription is simply saturated with woe. It ends:

Dinanzi a me non fur cose create, So non eterne, ed io eterno duro; Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate.

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” No wonder Dante cowered. The otlic-r familiar passage is the wail with which the hapless Francesca opens her narrative: Nessun maggior dolore, Che rioordarsi del tempo felioe Nella miseria; and this has been made ours by our own poet’s version: This is truo the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is re membering happier things.'

Finally, if we ask what is Dante’s standpoint through this poem, what his outlook on life, how he is related to the development of human thought, there is but one answer. His attitude is that ot the medieval church. He denounced her corruptions, but ho remained within the fold. He shows no trace of the rebellious son; he opened up no new vistas for speculation. The theology of the “Divinu Commedia ” is that 'of the doctors, of the Church; much of the “Paradiso” might be read as a poetic commentary on Thomas Aquinas. The physics and psychology are dilutions of Aristotle through Latin translations, such as were in vogue among the schoolmen. And yet herein lies Dante’s eternal glory, that he constructed an immortal poem on the basis of a rigid and uncompromising system of dogmatic theology. The beauty, the inspiration, the pathos, the sublimity, the piercing vision, the grandeur of conceptiQj, and the inexhaustible fertility—these were all his own; and we have only to turn to his tingling pages from the subtle hair-splitting of scholastic philosophers or the dry narratives of chroniclers, to realise the illuminating power of poetic genius.